Holy Cyclops

My nephews just saw the new Get Smart movie.  Apparently, there is an entrance form that Maxwell Smart has to fill out at some point, and one question on it has something to do with existentialism.  Intrepid Agent Eighty-Six leaves that particular answer space blank, and is later complimented on his answer—the best answer they’ve ever gotten, apparently.

My older nephew M. later asked me about that, while we were at Dairy Queen getting ice cream.  He wanted to know why it was funny.  And I laughed and then told him that while I got the joke, I wasn’t sure how to explain it.  Eventually, I told him a bit about Jean-Paul Sartre’s title Being and Nothingness, and about how some existentialists seem to concern themselves with nothing and nothingness (a mistake, I explained, since nothing or nothingness is not a thing but is simply the lack of anything and the word “nothing” does not denote an object but is simply a word meaning, “not anything”), but it wasn’t until my sister C.—the converted-to-Islam mother of my nephews—mentioned something about nihilism that I realized that the joke probably had to do with the attitude of despair that, in the popular mind, characterizes existentialism—the attitude that life is pointless and worthless and has no meaning.  And then I explained to him the following extremely important point:  Existentialism says that life has no intrinsic meaning and the universe has no intrinsic purpose, not that an individual person can find no meaning in the living of his life or that an individual person can find no purpose in the world around him.  For those who, like me, spent years searching for Ultimate Truth, such a realization—that there is no Meaning of Life or Cosmic Purpose to be found by introspection or by sitting around saying om over and over or in any other way—is initially discouraging.  But when one further realizes that meaning is always meaning to someone, and that purpose is always purpose to someone, so that one creates his own meaning and chooses his own purposes in living his life, then the existential realization is liberating—it is freeing. 

So, Maxwell Smart’s blank space was appropriate just to the extent that it expressed the realization that there was no intrinsic meaning or purpose to life; but if it was meant to express the popular despair of thinking that there was no meaning or purpose at all in life, then it went too far.  But it was funny.

What I didn’t say, though, was that the mistake some religious people make is in thinking that we should all ascribe what they think are God’s purposes to ourselves.  (Notice that one might easily think that it isn’t really a mistake for people to adopt religious purposes for themselves; we all choose our own meanings and purposes, and if those are the ones they want to adopt, well, why not?  I do wonder if it matters whether our meanings and purposes are chosen on the basis of justified beliefs about reality or not.  I’m inclined to think it does, but that might be my high valuation of truth showing, or perhaps my high valuation of reasons.)  First, why should someone else’s meanings or purposes be ours, even if that someone else is God?  God might find it meaningful to have people worship him, but why should people find it meaningful to worship God?  Meaningfulness to God shouldn’t be mistaken for intrinsic meaningfulness.  The reply would presumably be that one shouldn’t have God’s purpose, but rather the purpose that God thought best for him—he, being vastly knowing, ought to know better than anyone else what purpose would best suit a person, so one should listen to him when he tells him what that purpose is.  But, second—and, I think, rather devastatingly—how can one know what purpose God thinks is best for him?  If a holy book is then cited, how can it be known that the holy book is reliably relaying God’s thoughts on the matter?  I don’t see how it’s possible to know.